One image can bring The Land of the Free to its knees: brutality. (Photo gallery: Agony in focus)

The world has been shocked by photos depicting the brutality at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The Washington Post

In war. In peace. In-between. Images of one man, one woman — or one nation — cruelly harming another sear the soul, jar the guts and etch a memory with no erase button. They can drive the forces of history.

That woman in Army fatigues who disdainfully holds a naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash. That hooded man tottering on a box, wires dangling from his outstretched arms. That group of unclothed Iraqi prisoners, bound together on the prison floor like cattle waiting to be branded.

"We now have the new symbol of this war. It is no longer the picture of Saddam's statue tipping over — it's a girl with an Iraqi on a leash," says 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer.

These images shock. They disturb. And they foment questions:

How can a country that wraps itself in honor act so dishonorably?

Who is accountable?

Whatever the answers, individuals being abused, the vulnerable under attack, trigger our national anger and propel Americans into action.

Think of the video of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King.

Think of Vietnam-era slaughter — a general executes a prisoner in the streets of Vietnam, National Guardsmen slay demonstrators at Kent State.

"Photos have permanence," says Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press. "They sear an image in your mind. And when President Bush says those images are a 'stain' on the U.S., that's the caption to those pictures."

And we cringe, citizen by citizen, as the world watches. Military officials warn even more vile images and videos will emerge.

"The self-image of America is decency and fighting on the side of the right values. This war was waged as a moral war, with us being on the high ground. We think of other people in the world committing atrocities, not ourselves," says Edward Wakin, author of books on the effects of photos and film on U.S history.

But "here we are, caught in the act. They are not random photos, or news events; they are staged. We are contradicting everything we preach," says Wakin.

"And because of technology, there's no escaping the endlessly repeated image."

President Bush is trying. He countered with as many powerful public images as he could muster — appearing on Arab television one day last week, and on another day standing by King Abdullah of Jordan and publicly apologizing for the "stain on our country's honor."

Still, speculation looms that the uproar over Iraqi prisoner abuse — and the failure of the administration to recognize its explosive power — could cost Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld his job, no matter how often he apologizes to Congress.

Ultimately, the abuse scandal could change the course of the war and perhaps the presidential election campaign as well.

The power of pictures is unlike any other, says George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC's This Week. The prisoner scandal was detailed to top military leadership in lengthy reports weeks ago, but it attracted little attention until the photos were released. "Until we saw the picture, it didn't burn in."

Bush also says he didn't grasp what was really going on until he saw the photos. And Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry clobbers him with this, thundering in speech after speech that, if he becomes commander in chief, "I won't be the last to know."

At the least, the prisoner photos could be the third strike for public opinion on the war, says Ken Kobre, professor of photojournalism at San Francisco State University.

First came the Fallujah photos in which Iraqi insurgents mutilated the bodies of slain Americans.

"They make us ask, what are we doing here, defending people who desecrate our sacrifice?"

Then came the forbidden photos of coffins returning with slain U.S. military — some released by mistake, some smuggled to TheSeattle Times.

"Those made us think about how we are responsible for sending these people over there to die," says Kobre.

Turning points

Now come these prison photos.

Bill Hudson, APt

Firefighters turn their hoses full force on civil rights demonstrators July 15, 1963 in Birmingham, Ala.

"It's rare you can say an individual picture turned a corner in history. It takes a while for that drip, drip, drip effect to build up over time," says Kobre. "But there comes a point where you can look back and say, 'Here, this is where we changed.' We don't have enough distance yet on these photos — yet — to tell."

Look back to the first Gulf War. President George H. Bush acknowledged that he pulled back from attacking Baghdad after public opinion hit the wall with images of the "highway of death."

Two days after the declaration of a cease-fire in February 1991, Iraqi troops and civilians fleeing from Kuwait were trapped on the main highway north to Basra and bombed to smithereens.

Although months later an Army investigation cleared leadership of allegations of atrocity, the photos of fire-blasted bodies along the road gave the appearance of a massacre.

In A World Transformed, Bush's post-war book, his co-author and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft writes, "We had all become increasingly concerned over impressions being created in the press about the 'highway of death.' " Bush consulted advisers, the book says, and "there was no dissent."

Look back to the civil-rights-era images: Fire hoses. Lunging dogs. Citizens hammered for the audacity of attempting to vote, to ride a bus or sit at a lunch counter.

"People talked about justice for years and years, but suddenly you could see a graphic illustration of injustice," says Jim McNay, who teaches visual journalism at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif.

"The curtain of our innocence is ripped away by photographs."

When people first see a photo, they unconsciously — but instantaneously — project themselves into the picture, says Jerry Della Femina, a veteran image expert and ad executive. "Pictures bring you inside, whether you see yourself driving a new car or as a hapless prisoner who is being abused."

"We're a nation of individuals — it's the key to our character," says sociologist Barry Glassner, author of Culture of Fear. "So, when we see one person being brutalized, up close, it's instinctive to relate and think: That could happen to me — or my child."

It's too awful to imagine that we could be the one holding the leash.

"We're a nation that grew up worshiping Superman and Spider-Man, who always did the right thing," says Della Femina.

"The bad guys always fight dirty and the good guys always fight clean."

Our culture has ingrained in each of us the unwavering notion that only bad people do bad things, and that good people do good things, says Jerald Jellison, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.

"The photos give undeniable proof that bad things were caused by what are supposed to be good Americans," he says.

But, apparently, not this time.

Now, the "guards" — and the nation that President Bush calls the global guardian of democracy and human dignity — are imprisoned.